33rd Article - Day in the East

This Saturday I wanted to make the most of it and go for a nice hike along some basins. Unfortunately, the weather said no.

So, we (Lorenza (Italian), Nanou, and I) came up with a watertight plan: We would visit the Vanilleraie, which is a vanilla factory with a guided tour, and then drive a bit further east to visit a Tamil temple.

At 9:30 am, we set off and arrived on time for the tour at 10 am at the Vanilleraie. There we started with an informative film about the production of vanilla (Did you know it takes two years from pollination to sale?!).

Then we were guided through the plantations and processing areas by a very nice lady, who provided us with many details. Everything here is done manually, from pollinating the plants to sorting by size and packaging them in bundles, not a single machine is used.

It was really fascinating, and the hour flew by. At the end, we had a delicious vanilla ice cream with real vanilla (Fun fact: If you see those small black 'vanilla-y' dots in the vanilla ice cream, you can be almost certain that there is no real vanilla in it).

Afterwards, we decided to go to the temple, but then spontaneously decided to take advantage of the now not-so-bad weather and drive to a basin that was nearby.

We parked the car there and hiked through the jungle for about 15 minutes, until we reached the really beautiful Bassin Grondin. We were completely alone there. Due to the fact that I didn't bring my bikini because of the supposed weather, we had to find another activity. Well, let's just say I went from 0 to 5 stone-skipping jumps! (And yes, I'm proud of it!)

After some time, we decided to go to the Bassin Boeuf, which was only a 10-minute walk away. We also spent some time there until it actually started raining and we made our way back to the car.

After this spontaneous stop of about 2.5 hours, we actually went to the Temple de la Colosse. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to enter it, but even from the outside, they are impressive!

Back in Saint Denis, we dropped Lorenza off at her place and briefly visited a market that was nearby. It was a handicraft market with a Valentine's Day theme, very cute. I actually didn't plan on buying anything, but I simply fell in love with these Paille-en-queue earrings!

Everyone at the market was really nice, and we had good conversations. However, it wasn't particularly big, so after a short time, at around 3:45 pm, we headed home.

There, we cooked something (we had our last meal at 9 am) and then watched the movie Napoleon together with Léa, which I highly recommend.

And so ends a day where I had big plans, then discarded them, and in the end, still experienced a lot :D